Talk:ABC 33/40/GA1

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Nominator: Sammi Brie (talk · contribs) 17:22, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 17:47, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

Dibsing. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 17:47, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

Prose

• " tabbed to switch to Fox" idk if "tabbed" is the right word here. is it a technical term? otherwise I'd swap it
  • Changed.
• I would do the DYK thing and write something like "not to air the episode of Ellen in which Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian", if only because the title "The Puppy Episode" is probably not going to be as familiar
  • This is a good idea.
• The background and creation sections are kind of unavoidably boiling with radio callsigns, which makes it a bit difficult to read, but this feels largely unavoidable, so idk. Maybe keep it in mind if you take this to FAC ever
  • It's unfortunate, but it is necessary. WCFT and WJSU's existences have to be explained, and the way to do that is to illustrate that Birmingham, by lacking a third VHF, gave birth to UHF stations in three different cities. I also am trying to provide a snapshot bio of the stations ABC passed on affiliating with.
  • It does not help that Sinclair's purchase of Allbritton made it even harder to write about. The common name title here is a recognition that this station's branding, transmission arrangements, etc. are messy.
• "The station's move put a national spotlight on the gay community in Alabama" is there any more context available here?
  • Removed.
• It feels weird that the paragraph about the Ellen episode has some sentences about the call sign tacked on at the end, starting with "By this time, the WBMA call sign..." - I'd split them or maybe stick them in the next paragraph instead
  • This is actually when it appears first in written material with one singular and bizarre exception, an article in the Dayton Daily News (in Ohio) about a sports producer from one of the Dayton stations going to 33/40. It also was a significant struggle to identify when W58CK/WBMA-LP went into service. There were two reasons that a low-power station was roped in: the station needed to fill a gap of subpar OTA coverage in the Vestavia Hills etc. area, and it apparently needed to do something for ratings purposes to be attributed to Birmingham (Tuscaloosa and Anniston were their own DMAs until 1998).
• Not sure that the lead's phrasing "ABC 33/40 was an instant competitor in local television news" is really backed up in the body, which says they were created in 1996 but by 2001 were a second-place finisher - is that really an "instant competitor"?
  • Reworded. Changes to here: Sammi Brie (she/her · t · c) 02:28, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Spot checks Heads up I was hoping to do these today or tomorrow but I've been laid out by a post-holiday plague so it'll be a bit before I'm smart enough to read things again. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:27, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Okay, back to regularly scheduled brain, so here are spot checks, arbitrarily selected by random number generator.

• Ref 1 - doesn't explicitly say that the stations predated the freeze, and doesn't give the date range for the freeze (these are a bit nitpicky obviously as the dates are verifiable elsewhere, but has to be said)
  • Reworded a bit to be less direct on that.
• Ref 4 - not provided by WML, could I get a quote?
  • A shadow library mirrors Broadcasting and I sent you a link to that. (edit conflict)
• Ref 9 - All good
• Ref 14 - This is placed before two sentences, suggesting it supports both. It does support the latter, but I don't see where it supports the first sentence.
  • I have added two refs to support this. One mentions the three CBS affiliate situation by city. One mentions the wider coverage area of 6 + 13.
• Ref 23 - Since the content supporting the assertion is on page 12A, I would suggest linking directly to 12A rather than to 1A, which confused me at first, but that's a nitpick, the actual content is supported
  • I will tell you why I do this — to improve searchability and also to have the full article clipped if it is useful elsewhere (sometimes the case in columns). Doing this also helps in some cases where a full-text database was used to procure the original article and then a newspaper service added the paper. Bray0829 or someone else can then clip over the top and turn my offline cites into clippings.
• Ref 42 - Good
• Ref 55 - Looks good
• Ref 61 - Yup

No major concerns, ref 14 is the biggest thing and even that's not much. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:54, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

• @Premeditated Chaos: Done. Sammi Brie (she/her · t · c) 06:36, 9 January 2026 (UTC)
  • Sorry for taking so long! All good here, can confirm I saw the source sent to me, this is a pass. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:26, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.